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Sam Altman is becoming one of the most powerful people on Earth. Be afraid

theguardian.com

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Re: Sam Altman is becoming one of the most powerful people on Earth. Be afraid

#21

Post by fragmede »

jkaplowitz wrote: post #8
metabagel wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In many cases, you can still tell when an article was written by an LLM, but I think that window is closing fast.

In some senses it already has, though not always how you meant: I was once accused of using ChatGPT to write a Reddit comment that I genuinely wrote myself without AI assistance. (I think the person disliked the substance of what I was arguing, the length of my comment, or both.)

I've been accused of the same, but I just like writing. Wasn't sure how to respond to those allegations other than to say I'm not using ChatGPT to write my comment. consider it an achievement unlocked.

Re: Sam Altman is becoming one of the most powerful people on Earth. Be afraid

#22

Post by fragmede »

suprjami wrote: post #17
jkaplowitz wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In some senses it already has, though not always how you meant: I was once accused of using ChatGPT to write a Reddit comment that I genuinely wrote myself without AI assistance. (I think the person disliked the substance of what I was arguing, the length of my comment, or both.)

Gosh is that the next level? 2015: Search for something you've forgotten and find your own old post/comment explaining how to do it. 2025: Ask an LLM for something you've forgotten and have your own old post/comment read back to you.

We need a new version of https://xkcd.com/979/

Re: Sam Altman is becoming one of the most powerful people on Earth. Be afraid

#23

Post by nullc »

c1sc0 wrote: post #20
metabagel wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In many cases, you can still tell when an article was written by an LLM, but I think that window is closing fast.

But what about “assisted by” AI? Plenty of people use LLMs to enhance their writing abilities, like, say, ‘90s era grammar & spell check. Plenty of AI users are sophisticated enough to understand that dumping pure AI-Gen content is a bad idea. And what’s wrong with AI-enhanced speach?

Worse, OpenAI LLM pathologies are creeping into text written by actual humans because people are seeing so much garbage written by it that they're adopting its behavior.

Turns out that there is more than one kind of learning machine in play online and both can pick up the bad behavior of the other.

Re: Sam Altman is becoming one of the most powerful people on Earth. Be afraid

#25

Post by matteoraso »

The only real technological edge that OpenAI has right now (at least that I know of) is Sora. There are already some very good open source LLMs and the SoTA for image generation has always been Stable Diffusion. I don't think that Sora's some miraculous piece of technology that nobody else can replicate, so I doubt that OpenAI will be the absolute best in AI for long.

Re: Sam Altman is becoming one of the most powerful people on Earth. Be afraid

#27

Post by Nasrudith »

metabagel wrote: post #3

LLMs have benefits, but it's a real negative that you can no longer be sure if you are communicating with a human on the internet or reading something which was written by a human. It seems like public keys and web of trust are the future in terms of knowing that there is a human on the other end of the internet. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_signing_party But, I don't know what happens when a cloud of LLMs get t…

Public keys and web of trust as a solution to content validity seems to be a strangely common misconception of what "authentication" actually means.

All you would get at very most is "this was vouched for by a human", not an actual guarantee of humanity.

Once the WoT grows past a certain point it will be of dubious value. Furthermore, people would happily "sell their souls" into signing off on any ole bullshit for money. Let alone doing it for free if they think their violence towards the truth would be ideologically aligned. Any attempts at curing it frankly may be undesirable due to being worse than the disease.

Re: Sam Altman is becoming one of the most powerful people on Earth. Be afraid

#28

Post by CRConrad »

Nasrudith wrote: post #27
metabagel wrote: post #3

LLMs have benefits, but it's a real negative that you can no longer be sure if you are communicating with a human on the internet or reading something which was written by a human. It seems like public keys and web of trust are the future in terms of knowing that there is a human on the other end of the internet. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_signing_party But, I don't know what happens when a cloud of LLMs get t…

Public keys and web of trust as a solution to content validity seems to be a strangely common misconception of what "authentication" actually means. All you would get at very most is "this was vouched for by a human", not an actual guarantee of humanity. Once the WoT grows past a certain point it will be of dubious value. Furthermore, people would happily "sell their souls" into signing off on any ole bullshit for mo…

> Once the Wheel of Time grows past a certain point...

Oh, wait, you weren't talking about Robert Jordan's fantasy series.

My bad. Yet another proof I'm old, yet another acronym to re-learn to keep up with the times... Sigh.

Re: Sam Altman is becoming one of the most powerful people on Earth. Be afraid

#29

Post by CRConrad »

ramon156 wrote: post #24

These titles never do it for me. I like the concept of sketching out how much power sam has, but he's not going to be "powerful" and you shouldn't be afraid either. No point in being afraid of something you have no control over

> he's not going to be "powerful"

He's rich, and apparently going to get richer + Money is power = He's powerful, and apparently going to get more powerful.

> and you shouldn't be afraid either. No point in being afraid of something you have no control over

Sure. But also, no point in telling people not to be afraid of stuff they're going to be afraid of anyway. Like, would you say you have no fear whatsoever of getting cancer, or of a global nuclear war? (So, what, are you hoping for them...?) How much control do you have over either of those?

Being afraid of something is a good incentive to try and do something about it. That's what the headline means. And this slimeball getting even more power is something that the collective readership of The Guardian has at least a somewhat better chance of doing something about than cancer or global nuclear war.

Re: Sam Altman is becoming one of the most powerful people on Earth. Be afraid

#30

Post by CRConrad »

horns4lyfe wrote: post #19

These reporters know there are CEO’s that sell things like water, food, and energy to huge portions of the population right? Open AI is a blip.

> These reporters know

The article is an opinion piece by an external contributor; the author is not a reporter. From the end of TFA:

> Gary Marcus is a scientist, entrepreneur and bestselling author. He was founder and CEO of machine learning company Geometric Intelligence, which was acquired by Uber, and is the author of six books, including the forthcoming Taming Silicon Valley (MIT Press)

> there are CEO’s

There are CEO’s what; which possession of CEOs are you taking about?

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